The Problem is Population Decline!

06 Apr The Problem is Population Decline!

Once again, I have accepted the responsibilities of being president of United Families International. While my life as a full time wife, mother, educator, and citizen offer plenty of personal fulfillment, I find myself compelled to contribute my resources to protecting family life for countries and individuals around the world where it is being threatened.

The cultural war to devalue the family and replace it with government based programs and substitutes is ongoing–even escalating. The mission of UFI and, and my personal mission is to increase our educational outreach to more and more individuals who will then, with increased knowledge and understanding, find opportunities in their communities to affect policy and programs that will strengthen and protect the family rather than devalue and replace it!

Soon after the first marriage amendment attempt in Arizona was defeated I was asked by a naysayer why I spend such a large part of my time and energy fighting for issues that are surely destined to fail. I looked him in the eye and said, “We won’t fail, because someone is touched by every alert we send or speech we give with new understanding and commitment to the family. This is an individual battle not a collective one. If just one heart is changed and one family is saved, we have won. And with each win we find increased strength in the voice to protect other families.”

Just as we were eventually able to secure an Arizona Marriage amendment, we find time and again that the consequences of trying to change the fundamental values and institutions of society bring people back to the reality of what truly creates happiness and success in humans. Changing laws or definitions of marriage, gender, or sexual “rights” won’t change what for eons of time have created strong civilizations.

United Families International will continue to educate in behalf of a respect for Family, Marriage, Life, Parental Rights, and Sovereignty. I invite you to join us in strengthening the voice of the family. Visit our website, inform others of the opportunities available to learn and act in preserving a future for families.

Turning our attention to yet another threat to the family

Next week, the UN’s Commission on Population and Development will convene in New York and United Families International will be there representing you. This year’s theme: “Fertility, Reproductive Rights, and Development” swings wide the door to anti-life and anti-family activists. They didn’t waste any time packing the conference draft document full of references to “reproductive health services” (abortion in UN parlance), references to sexual and reproductive rights as human rights, and language that would allow them to teach their version of sex education and human sexuality to the world’s children.

In terms of fertility, they haven’t wasted a minute in trying to manipulate the conference conversation and document using the scare tactic of a continuing “population explosion” to justify demands for increased funding for “family planning commodities” – which meshes nicely with their abortion agenda. Yet there is little to nothing regarding the needs of families for clean water, sanitation, modern medicine and healthcare, skilled birth attendants and pre and post-natal care to reduce maternal mortality.

They have also ignored the need to address the on-going and dramatic population declines in the developed world. There’s only one sentence in the entire draft document on the low-fertility rates throughout the developed world. Yet there are currently at least 16 references to reproductive health services, sexual rights or some version of these.

Here are some facts on demographic decline that are being virtually ignored:

* By 2020, for the first time, the global fertility rate will dip below the global replacement rate of 2.1. (The number of children each couple should have to replace themselves.)

* Today about 44% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility.

* At a fertility rate of 1.4, a country will lose one-third of its population each generation. Approximately 17 European countries currently have fertility rates of 1.4 or below.

* The U.S. is currently at or near replacement level (2.1 fertility rate). Without immigration, it is estimated the fertility rate would be 1.8.

* The UN’s “no-change” scenario (nothing changing in the current fertility rates going forward) puts Europe’s population at 100 million people by 2300 (today it’s 733 million). By 2300, North America would have 500 million people and Africa would have 33 trillion.

* The UN is quick to point out that the above scenario’s outrageous African population number (33 trillion) is almost with a certainty not going to play out, as African fertility rates are continuing to drop. They reference a medium-range scenario as the most likely – showing a total world population of 8.3 billion at year 2300. (Report of the Secretary General, World Demographic Trends, UN CPD, 2011)

Regarding the future of Europe, however, the UN report acknowledges “that current fertility levels pose the challenge of sustained population decline. At current fertility and mortality levels, the population of Europe could be halved by 2110.” (Report of the Secretary General, World Demographic Trends, UN CPD, 2011)

No country knows the dangerous consequences of demographic decline better than Russia. With a fertility rate that hovers around 1.35, Russia’s a country that has begun to witness what it is like to lose a large junk of population to demographic decline.

Mr. Putin speaks the truth. The solution does lies in strengthening the family. For the large part of the world experiencing population decline, a UN conversation on fertility needs to center on developing solutions for too few children being born and inexorable population aging – not inexorable population growth.

For the less developed world, perhaps the conversation – and the funding! – should center not onefforts to dictate reduced-family size, increasing condom distribution, abortion access, and human sexuality education, but on helping them obtain such things as clean running water, sanitation, disease control, modern medicine and health care, education for their children, and the economic and political stability that undergirds it all. Population reduction, if necessary, will then take care of itself.

United Families International will be in New York next week to help make that conversation happen and we welcome and need your support.